Moonrise Millie are not words you would associate with
Mark Latham
, nor would you expect to find him at Harrington Grove Country Club in Sydney’s outer west, but there he was on a recent winter’s day talking quietly about a lot of things, mostly horse racing and his love of horses, and, more particularly, horse breeding.

“It’s the most intellectually challenging activity I’ve come across. It’s one thing to be romanced by the atmosphere of the racetrack; it’s a different thing to expose yourself to the addictive qualities of pedigree theory and thoroughbred breeding,’’ he says.

“It’s limitless. You can go back six, seven, eight, nine generations with horses and find affinities and clusters of interest, thousands of them.’’

You picture Latham in the study of his house, on its five-acre block west of Sydney with its post-and-rail enclosures, poring over computerised breeding charts, looking for that perfect genetic combination of speed and endurance in bloodlines that reach back over the years.

Maybe politicians should be similarly assessed for temperament, staying power and the ability to run what might be described as an honest race? If that were the standard, more than a few of Latham’s former colleagues would already be on their way to the knackery.

Latham himself, after a theatrical exit from public life after losing the 2004 election, has returned to his roots, more or less, in Sydney’s west, where he served as mayor of Liverpool and later as the member for Gough Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa, before being elevated prematurely to the Labor leadership.

That world seems far away as discussion over lunch at Bibendum restaurant in Harrington Park, part of the old Sir Warwick Fairfax estate, drifts towards Latham’s “girls’’ as he calls them. These are his unraced filly Moonrise Millie and his brood mares Island Kestrel, Dominare, Summer Circle and Requite.

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Latham says he didn’t name the latter, but it’s not a bad moniker for a politician’s horse, meaning repayment for something. Better, in Latham’s case, than Unrequited.

By this stage we have ordered braised lamb shoulder with gravy and a 2006 Ingram Road shiraz cabernet from Coldstream in Central Victoria. The wine has a “long finish’’, according to the label, which seems appropriate in the circumstances.

We had agreed during the 2010 election to meet for lunch in Sydney’s west to discuss a shared interest in horses, column writing and, tangentially, politics – inasmuch as the racetrack could be said to be a metaphor for the ups and downs of political life.

“Horses and horse breeding can draw you in and it can be its own little self-contained world,’’ Latham says. “Disappointment can always be around the corner, as I’ve discovered.’’ He laughs.

Actually, Latham has regained a sardonic sense of humour – if he ever lost it. His communications skills derive from a command of the idiom, which he deploys laconically in a manner that gets people’s attention, like a Paul Keating or a Bob Hawke. What advice might he have for Julia Gillard who, it seems, could learn something from his ability to define a message and mood?

“Read my columns,’’ he says. Latham has turned into a well-read columnist whose attributes have developed over the four years he has been contributing to this newspaper and as he continues to distance himself from the political world he once inhabited.

“I don’t have much contact with people active in the political system now. But that does give you an objectivity. If you’re familiar with the process you can pretty well work out what’s going on,’’ he says. “I don’t pull punches. I don’t see the reason to. So much of what people who have been active in the political system write in their columns is just horse shit – partisan horse shit!

“When Peter Costello writes about insights into the Liberal Party it’s quite compelling. But when he flicks the switch to some partisan criticism of the Labor Party, it is predictable and boring.

“It just shows the value of people writing to their strengths instead of treating the readers as fools.’’

Latham is an effective interpreter of the Labor psyche, even if his former colleagues might have trouble conceding the point. He’s also a competent writer, unlike many politicians turned commentators who can barely write their names.

“One of the rules of good writing is constant rewriting,’’ he says, and he is right. “The fortnightly cycle allows you to polish to the point that you want to get to.’’ He mentions that his 10-year-old son Oliver is a gifted writer who’s “not short of ambition’’. Father and son exchange notes, in fact, on writing.

“One of the advantages of living on a property and doing gardening and looking after some horses is that you get free thinking time,’’ he says. “The mind’s not closed when you’re out on the property.

“My starting point is always to think I don’t write the obvious. My objective is to try to take the reader a little bit behind the scenes of what the political system is thinking about an issue, more in the structural background of a story,’’ he says.

Thus he veers away from pure politics into public policy issues, such as mental health, which might attract his attention.

Latham himself has become a small media industry, writing columns for The Australian Financial Review, appearing regularly on Sky News, writing for Tom Switzer’s The Spectator – and now critiquing Gerard Henderson, columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and head of the Sydney Institute, for Crikey.

The former member for Werriwa has taken it upon himself to monitor Henderson’s output, in the way that Henderson himself scores the work of others, in what is being described mischievously as “Henderson Watch.’’

“I’m working on the old principle of who will guard the guardians. Someone needs to do it. So it’s me,’’ he says, laughing.

As the meal drifts on, wine glasses empty, and Latham mops up the gravy with his bread rolls, his observations become a little more pointed about personalities and politics, but without rancour these days, it seems.

But dominating the conversation is horses and horse breeding, an interest which derives from an early introduction to the turf by a father who was an unsuccessful punter.

Latham can remember wagging school from Hurlstone Agricultural High School, where he was dux, to go to nearby Warwick Farm racetrack. If he lost his money it was a “long walk home".

Among memories – he appears to have photographic recall – is an early visit to the track in 1976 as a 15-year-old for the Liverpool City Cup at Warwick Farm, won by Wave King. But it was another horse that got his attention that day when Glen Vain, backed by Latham, beat the Bart Cummings-trained Ming Dynasty, which went on to be one of Australia’s greatest thoroughbreds.

“The fact I can remember that day is a measure of how the romance, the challenge and the excitement of getting a winner just grabs you and drags you along for the rest of your life – as you know, Tony,’’ he says.

When Latham exited politics after 2004, and helped by the proceeds of The Latham Diaries, he realised an ambition and “got into a little bit of horse ownership’’ with a small share in Requite, which didn’t live up to either Latham’s expectations or the claims of its trainer.

“If you think there are some bullshit artists in politics, boy, there’s some bullshit artists among horse trainers,’’ he says.

Latham talks about the variables – and the heartbreak – in racing, which are well known to those who have had anything to do with the sport, and are not unlike politics when you come to think about it, but there are differences, too.

“In politics everyone goes in with high expectations. In racing only a fool would have very high expectations,’’ he says.

When the glasses are drained and the coffee cups are empty and an Irish waitress named Grace bustles off to get the bill, I say to Latham that he seems to be throwing himself into the racing game with the energy he devoted to his public career before it flamed out.

“Yeah,’’ he says. “There’s an urge to be thorough about things. To know everything you can know about a certain discipline. There’s that similarity, I can see that. But horses are nicer than politicians by nature.’’